Not to worry! Danee has not succeeded in breeding out the ding-dong gene, so when you want to call on of her ferrets just ring a little clear bell. One that rings in C seems to work especially well. Added bonus: if you or your namesake are there and not feeling too well with a sore throat you can use it to bring Dann to the rescue. Yes, Pivot is too smart for her own good (or at least we tell ourselves that it is for her own good) sometimes, too! Me thinks grand dames secretly had ferrets and were not always ringing for Jeeves. More serious topics: If ticks are the primary problem then Frontline works better for those than Revolution BUT it does not work for the paralytic ticks of Australia. To prevent heartworm the full adult cat dose of Revolution is needed, and yes, there actually has been a study on that. Check the archives of the FML and FHL for posts on the topic from AFERRETVET on the FHL or ones I carried to the FML here. --- Ferrets CAN get H1N1 and at least one other strain of swine flu. In a situation in which a colony of a thousand was accidently infected with a different swine flu strain about 8% got the disease, and ferrets are used in studies of the current variant. The tricky thing about this virus is that when it goes wrong it can more easily take up residence deep in the lungs than more common influenza types (per studies in ferrets) but how easily it is transmitted among ferrets varied a lot in the studies done. The good thing is that the proportion of such serious cases appears to be very small, perhaps smaller in individuals who have been vaccinated against the standard avian flu variants that go around every year -- not a huge surprise because the H1N1 strain has gobbled some avian influenza genetics into itself in recombinations. H1N1 also varies in severity among populations, so pregnant women are at much higher risk than most others, for example. In the U.S. among humans many of us (though certainly not all) who were born before 1957 still have some immunity from a previous wide spread of a swine flu so are afforded some protection from that. There is a quite a bit in the archives on this. The big thing, of course, is to use the same precautions as with any influenza: loads of long hand washes, stop kissing ferrets if may be ill, etc. What has WHO (World Health Organization) worried 1. when there is not decent medical care available the death rate goes up quite a bit with this influenza 2. for all the worry is that it might at some point combine with one of the nastier avian influenzas in a way that help one of those spread more easily, or perhaps make this one more virulent. The first is more likely than the second simply because viruses that survive best and therefore are most likely to replicate well have these characteristics 1. They spread easily 2. They do not kill off their hosts (and that way can continue to spread) The primary hosts, of course, do not have to be humans. Sukie (not a vet) Recommended ferret health links: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html http://www.miamiferret.org/ http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/ http://www.ferretcongress.org/ http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html all ferret topics: http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html [Posted in FML 6413]